SEC System - an endangered marketing concept.

Yes, maybe a few years from now we wont be as much in need of the SEC System as we are today. It is a system that has served us well but it is time we get ready to park it in the archives.

Marketing is a social science - it is about people. And, people are a complex system - each person is unique in more ways than one. But, as markets expanded, marketers got distanced from their customers - and gradually each customer just became a statistic in the marketers books. The expanding marketing eco-system then needed a language to transact this statistic and the SEC System evolved. As happens with most transaction currencies, they proper on unity of value and dimish the multi-dimensional acpects of the product itself. Likewise, the SEC System took a very simplified (uni-dimensional) view of the consumer and shoved consumers into some very dark cells of this SEC Grid.

It was also not possible for the marketers to do much different as a collective. Organizations did not have the technology and the resources to manage one-to-one relationships with customers. Every interaction of the brand was a broadcast to a segment of the population. SEC provided a viable method to refer to this population, to group them, to study them and to communicate with them.

For decades we have designed products, services, communication - all for these boxes often caring least about the unique multi-dimensional personalities in these cells. But, gone are the times when the consumer allowed himself/ herself to be confined to these cells. The times are a changing.

Now we are in a connected world. The marketer is no more far removed from the consumer. The consumer is no more a stranger for the marketer. Yes, the mind of the consumer may still be an enigma as always but atleast, the physical presence of the consumer is very well recorded. Today, the marketer at times knows more about the consumer than the consumer himself/ herself. Every day brands are establishing one-to-one connections with the consumers.

When, interacting with other functions of the marketing eco-system such as research or communication companies, brands are lesser and lesser dependent on refering to their consumers by the SEC. The comsumer profiles are far more specific. We already talk of attitudes, psychorgaphics, consumption behaviour, future intentions and so much more. With newage digital technologies of 'tagging' - customer definitions are becoming more and more specific and dynamic. The innumerable tags that today define consumers in the digital world can never fit into a system as simplistic as the SEC.

With the advent of digital technology consumers have now emerged from the SEC boxes and marketers are treating them as real people. Yes, it will be sad to see the SEC system set aside but I am sure this change shall lead the consumers to more delightful products, services and communication that is more human and personal.

Of course! we still turn to candles when the latest tecnology fails and plummets the world into darkness - so also we will always look to the SEC System to throw its frail but guiding light on to consumers as and when we stumble into darkness.